More Breezy Optimism
And speaking of religious tyranny and the optimistic idea that truth will triumph ‘in the end’, there is this little problem.
A growing number of science students on British campuses and in sixth form colleges are challenging the theory of evolution and arguing that Darwin was wrong. Some are being failed in university exams because they quote sayings from the Bible or Qur’an as scientific fact and at one sixth form college in London most biology students are now thought to be creationists. Earlier this month Muslim medical students in London distributed leaflets that dismissed Darwin’s theories as false. Evangelical Christian students are also increasingly vocal in challenging the notion of evolution.
It’s unfortunate when people who are wrong and confused get ‘increasingly vocal’. People like that should get increasingly quiet, instead.
In the United States there is growing pressure to teach creationism or “intelligent design” in science classes, despite legal rulings against it. Now similar trends in this country have prompted the Royal Society, Britain’s leading scientific academy, to confront the issue head on with a talk entitled Why Creationism is Wrong. The award-winning geneticist and author Steve Jones will deliver the lecture and challenge creationists, Christian and Islamic, to argue their case rationally at the society’s event in April.
Well done the Joneses, as Steve Jones amusingly said in his comment on Judge Jones’s decision in Kitzmiller. But how tiresome that it’s necessary. How tiresome all this militant noisy ‘vocal’ theism is.
Leaflets questioning Darwinism were circulated among students at the Guys Hospital site of King’s College London this month as part of the Islam Awareness Week, organised by the college’s Islamic Society. One member of staff at Guys said that he found it deeply worrying that Darwin was being dismissed by people who would soon be practising as doctors. The leaflets are produced by the Al-Nasr Trust, a Slough-based charity set up in 1992 with the aim of improving the understanding of Islam. The passage quoted from the Qur’an states: “And God has created every animal from water. Of them there are some that creep on their bellies, some that walk on two legs and some that walk on four. God creates what he wills for verily God has power over all things.”
Well that clears that up. And it’s considerably shorter than most textbooks.
Most of the next generation of medical and science students could well be creationists, according to a biology teacher at a leading London sixth-form college. “The vast majority of my students now believe in creationism,” she said, “and these are thinking young people who are able and articulate and not at the dim end at all. They have extensive booklets on creationism which they put in my pigeon-hole … it’s a bit like the southern states of America.” Many of them came from Muslim, Pentecostal or Baptist family backgrounds, she said, and were intending to become pharmacists, doctors, geneticists and neuro-scientists.
Oh, goody – loony Pentecostal neuroscientists who think ‘God’ created everything. But don’t forget – the truth will triumph in the end.
Gee, I wonder what will happen to the Pentecostal neuroscientists when they find out that they have no need for the “spirit ghost in the machine” hypothesis. If they think evolution challenges dualistic religion, wait till they get to the brain sciences.
The only reason fundamentalists are not howling over Damasio instead of Darwin is that neurology is not taught to schoolchildren, so it flies under their radar.
I’m not sure why you think the truth won’t triumph, in the end, OB.
In this case and in the Irving case, a sect-like minority agressively making demands or denying historical fact isn’t the same as a sect-like minority taking over schools, or even having a chance to. Admittedly, the sect-like minority that thinks Global warming is a hoax is enjoying a last stand with the current American administration, but even there the truth is slowly, inevitably winning.
If your definition of the truth is universal consent, that’s much too onerous a criteria.
In fact, oftentimes it is when the truth is mandated that shady and morally disgusting things happen. In the fifties, when it was mandated that the Nazi atrocities did happen, it was also the case that Nazi war criminals were either being quietly whisked to Argentina by the Vatican, or used by NASA in the U.S., or becoming judges in West Germany. Hannah Arendt’s first chapter in Eichmann in Jerusalem is all about the tacit re-Nazification in Germany. It wasn’t until the sixties and seventies, with the dissolving of all kinds of taboos and censorships, that the Holocaust assumed center stage in the historical accounts of the Nazis. And even now, how many people know that Werner von Braun not only helped build the Apollo rockets, but was a German officer in one of the worst concentration camps? Not something you can attribute to Irving.
What is ‘the end’, Roger?
And what is a “sect-like minority”?
Creationists are hardly the tiny minority that Holocaust deniers are.
Together, the active creationists and the science-ignorant believers who’ve been convinced by the activists that their religious beliefs cannot be reconciled with science (which may or may not be true) comprise a sizeable minority or even a majority of the population in most Western democracies.
And it is extraordinarily misleading to call them “sect-like” when they belong to multiple mainstream denominations of multiple religions. Creationists aren’t Bo Peep and the Heaven’s Gate crew. They’re Bush’s “base.” They’re supporters of Blair’s faith school push.
They are idiots, certainly. But the human species has never enjoyed a dearth of those.
And what do you mean the truth is slowly, inevitably winning? Calling it inevitable is question-begging. And what do you mean it was mandated that the Nazi atrocities did happen? That’s an exceptionally opaque phrase.
ps – I should add that I do think people like you, continually on the attack, OB, are necessary for truth to “triumph in the end” and I appreciate that. I’m just saying that the creationist influence is blown way out of proportion by the press; and that there are many strategies, besides perpetual head on attack, that advance the cause of the enlightenment. To say that one wants to hear both sides isn’t the same as saying both sides are right, and it might be a much better way to influence the side that is clinging to medieval notions.
Roger: “Admittedly, the sect-like minority that thinks Global warming is a hoax…”
This is a completely false description of the situation. Some scientists — and it is not a small number (and, yes, I am one of them) — think that current predictions of future climates are unreliable and greatly exaggerate the potential problems likely to occur.
Our judgement is made on the basis of the available evidence and is IN NO WAY “sect-like”.
“…is enjoying a last stand with the current American administration, but even there the truth is slowly, inevitably winning.”
The nature of science is that NO-ONE is privilege to know the “truth”; we can only work our way towards it by testing hypotheses against the available evidence. One prediction, said to be confirmed by many, is that cyclones will increase in frequency and intensity.
Well, not according to the evidence: “McBride says there’s no proof that cyclones have become more common or will become more frequent in the future, or that they’ll take place in more parts of the world.” See http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1574644.htm
I’m not as “Whiggish” in my history as Roger. I can’t see that there is any inevitability that “progress” will triumph in the end. Look at what happened to Greek learning when the Christians got their hands on it.
The point is that creationism is growing, fuelled by growing religiosity. This is happening at a time when the intellectual barriers to creationism have been weakened by cultural relativism, intercultural hypersensitivity and varieties of “Science Studies”.
The point is that, ultimately, Universities are paid for by governments ,the students themselves or wealthy donors. Many of these could be creationists and could kill off evolutionary theory simply by withholding funds.
The Byzantine emperor Justinian closed down the Athenian Schools because of his opposition to their pagan ethos. The Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di burnt thousands of books. Why can’t other people do the same?
On the other hand it is a good thing if they fail exams because of this as this means they won’t get into the system.
I also wonder about this London sixth form college at which most of the students are creationists. Is it in an area where the majority of the population are religious muslims?
I also wonder about this London sixth form college at which most of the students are creationists. Is it in an area where the majority of the population are religious muslims?
Default hypothesis 1: yes, it is.
Default hypothesis 2: The Guardian will never say “yes, it is” — not even if the population were 125% Muslim, if you follow my math.
Still, fair dos – the Guardian did report the story, which does focus on Muslim creationism as well as Xian creationism.